


People you see on the bus

by thecurlymop



Category: The Crimson Field
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-03-16 12:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3488273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecurlymop/pseuds/thecurlymop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom sees a mother and daughter every day on the bus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s **Monday**. He’s halfheartedly rushing for work which means he forgot most of his lunch and he walked very fast to the bus stop and missed one by a whisker. He could walk to the other bus stop but really he can’t be bothered and he’d probably still be late. So now he’s waiting in a line of other people who missed the previous bus, all who look slightly disgruntled. The rain is falling in an irritating mist and he can tell that by the time he gets to his office his coat will be soaked through.

His attention is caught by a high pitched squeal and his heart inwardly sinks. Not only does he absolutely have to catch the next bus but there is going to be a squealing infant on it too. The child in question comes into sight, dashing along to the front of the queue being followed by a slender woman.

‘Sylvie, no, Sylvie we have to wait back there,’ she says, grasping the child and attempting to lead her to the back of the line.

‘I don’t wanna,’ screeches little Sylvie as Tom winces with at least half the other people around him.

‘Sylvie,’ says the woman in a warning tone.

Sylvie’s face crumples and she turns and follows her mother silently. Tom is amazed. He’d been terrified that he’d have to witness several tantrums and gain at least one burst eardrum and all before nine in the morning. But it seemed that Sylvie’s mother was very much the one in charge here.

Eventually the bus arrives and they climb on. Sylvie and her mother sit a few rows in front of Tom and he occupies himself by tracing the elaborate curls of hair that are piled on the mother’s head. Occasionally Sylvie turns round and stares back at him as if she can sense his interest in her mother and so he pulls faces at her until she turns back again with a haughty sniff.

They get off a stop before him and Tom is sad to see their place taken by a man with a disturbingly shiny pink skull peeking through the thin strands of hair on the crown of his head.

He wonders if they’ll be there again tomorrow.

* * *

 

 **Tuesday**. It’s still raining and Tom makes it onto the bus just as it starts moving. He’s always glad there’s that open step at the back of the bus. Sadly he has to stand so he hangs on to the bar and sways gently with the movement of the bus, thinking of nothing except the discomfort of his damp wool coat until he hears a familiar voice.

‘No Sylvie, you need to sit still, there’s not enough room to swing your legs and you’re annoying the nice gentleman in front.’

The nice gentleman in question doesn’t look very nice at all in fact, his face is screwed up in distaste and if Tom were to guess, he’d say the man was allergic to children. Tom used to think he was as well and then his sister had three in quick succession and he was converted.

Sylvie stops kicking and looks for something else to divert her. She cranes her head around, looking disturbingly like she’s been possessed and then she catches sight of Tom. A grin passes over her face and Tom can’t stop the answering one on his. They spend the rest of the bus ride pulling horrendous faces at each other to the amusement and sometimes disgust of the other passengers. Sylvie’s mother seems fairly unconcerned with what is amusing her daughter so much, just disappearing into the pages of her magazine with a sigh.

As on Monday, they get off on the stop before his. Sylvie follows her mother closely, grimacing all the way.

* * *

On **Wednesday** he is early. Yelland is being a pain again and he wants to be there to go over his notes a few more times. Miles laughed at him but then Miles isn’t being systematically destroyed by a stupid man who thinks he’s better than anyone else. So Tom’s not in the best of moods as he climbs on to the bus half an hour earlier than usual. And he feels worse when he realises his usual entertainment won’t be there. It’s only been two mornings but he’s enjoyed having Sylvie’s little monkey face peeping at him from behind the seats.

He sits down and closes his eyes. He knows the journey like the back of his hand so it’s not as if he’s going to miss anything. When he gets off the bus at his stop he wanders towards the office reluctantly. He needs to do the extra work if he’s going to keep his job but right now, his job is very unappealing.

* * *

 

He wakes early on **Thursday** too but that’s pure coincidence. It gives him time to iron his shirt a little more thoroughly and actually put thought into selecting his tie instead of grabbing one of the two he always wears. He only has to wait a few minutes before the bus comes and it is just about to leave when he sees two familiar faces running up the hill towards the bus.

‘Wait! Please!’ gasps Sylvie’s mother, dragging the child behind her at a speed her legs can barely keep up with. Tom, unthinkingly, puts out a hand to block the doors from closing and they ping back with a whoosh, inches from him. He breathes a sigh of relief, he’s quite fond of that hand.

Sylvie and her mother canter onto the bus and almost into him. They pay while the other passengers look on, annoyed. He understands, he feels the same way about late arriving passengers most of the time, they only delay the bus. Of course it’s different if it’s him. Or if it’s Sylvie and her mother apparently.

Sylvie’s mother gives him a grateful smile as she brushes past him and he breathes the light perfume that hangs in the air after her. Sylvie follows, panting, worn out from the race to the bus. He has to stand all the way to his stop but it’s worth it for the second smile he gets as they leave the bus. He spends the rest of the day happier than he thinks his colleagues have ever seen him and he manages to alarm Yelland spectacularly by laughing at an insult aimed his way instead of puffing up in anger as usual.

* * *

On **Friday** , unusually, he gets on the bus with Miles. Although they live and work together, Miles generally works different shifts to him because he really isn’t good in the mornings. But this Friday, Miles has ended up with the earlier shift and he’s not entirely happy about it. He stands next to Tom in the queue, swaying slightly with sleepiness and when the bus comes, he doesn’t move until Tom nudges him pretty hard.

Sylvie and her mother are in the queue behind them but they bob and weave in the mass of passengers until they are right behind Tom and Miles. They sit in the row in front of them and while Miles almost immediately falls asleep, trusting Tom to wake him at the right point, Tom keeps his eyes open, again fascinated by the curls of hair twirled up into a bun on Sylvie’s mother’s head. Sylvie only turns once and crosses her eyes at him briefly before her mother murmurs something to her and she sits around properly, wriggling in a puppy like fashion until they get off the bus. She turns and waves slightly at Tom as they walk past his window and he smiles and waves back.

* * *

 

The next week he looks out for them but as the week goes on his hopes go down. He even looks for them in the supermarket, reasoning that as they got on at the same bus stop, they must live fairly close and therefore go to the one supermarket in the area. But he never sees them even if he sees that twirled up hair in the corner of his eye several times. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tom is strolling idly next to Miles in the early summer sunshine one weekend when he hears a familiar voice. He can only see the back of her head but he knows it’s her. She is talking to another woman of about the same age with an open, friendly face.

‘It was becoming unbearable, he was so controlling that we had to leave, you saw him Flora, he was dreadful!’

‘Hmm but was it really necessary to go all the way to Devon, to take Sylvie out of nursery, for six months?’

‘Perhaps I could have done it differently but it got the right result…’

‘Oh Kitty!’

* * *

‘What is it Tom?’

Tom realises he has paused too long, listening to the conversation between the two women to pretend to Miles that it was nothing. Still, he can try and delay the conversation a little.

‘It’s nothing, I’ll tell you later,’ he says awkwardly, trying to get Miles to agree.

‘Ok,’ he shrugs, ‘but you will tell me.’

They walk on and Tom inwardly rejoices. Now he knows the name of Sylvie’s mother and he knows why they disappeared. Kitty. It's a nice name, softer than he would have expected but very pretty.

Later he tells Miles that he’d caught sight of someone he thought he’d known a while ago and Miles rolls his eyes.

‘Tom, you have that look on your face. Only one thing makes you look like that and it’s being in love.’

Tom protests but only weakly. It’s stupid to have fallen in love with a hairstyle and a voice and a smile, before even knowing her name but there it is. He has, Miles is right, but he’d still prefer not to acknowledge that.

* * *

He sees her the next weekend, this time with Sylvie. Both are dressed smartly and Sylvie wears a straw sunhat which keeps threatening to blow off. He walks behind them for a little bit, wondering where they are going before it’s the turn off to his road and he has to leave them behind. He can still hear their debate about whether pink is an appropriate colour for Sylvie’s stuffed dragon’s bow tie as he walks off smiling.

* * *

The next week they reappear on the bus. Tom’s just about to climb on when a small voice pipes up behind him.

‘Is this the bus Mummy?’

‘Yes, Sylvie. Wait for the other people to get on first, remember how we line up.’

Tom finds a seat near the back of the bus and then sees them climb on. There’s one seat next to an elderly lady and Kitty sits, scooping Sylvie onto her lap. Immediately, Sylvie is wriggling around, wanting to see out of the windows and then when she discovers the view isn’t that great, she wants to see behind them. Her eyes skate over Tom, once, twice, before she recognises him properly and then she pulls an experimental face.

Tom is impressed. It’s far more gruesome than he remembers and he quickly replies with crossed eyes and a huge grin. Sylvie’s chuckles are worth the strange looks he gets from the girl next to him and they continue the exchange until Kitty rises, heaving a protesting Sylvie up into her arms and off the bus.

* * *

They reappear on the bus every morning. Usually they’re a little late and have to rush towards the bus as the doors are closing. They scramble on and search for a seat. Once, Tom was sure he would be able to give up his seat for Kitty, maybe receive that beautiful smile in thanks but a man in front of him does so instead and Tom is left, braced to rise from his seat with bag in hand and feeling a little stupid.

He and Sylvie exchange horrible faces for most of the journey and, hilariously, Tom can feel his face getting more flexible with every day of exercise. He’s also sure he’s giving himself new wrinkles but that doesn’t matter.

Then on Friday, Sylvie isn’t there. Kitty strides onto the bus, unencumbered with her child or all the assorted bits and pieces that come with one, and she’s looking more beautiful than she ever has before. She sits in front of him and he can hardly breathe, she is so close. Her perfume wafts over him as she sits down and he almost misses the uncomplicated antics of Sylvie being there. Now he’s trapped in thoughts about this woman he’d never even talked to and if that wasn’t strange he couldn’t think what was.

The bus becomes more crowded and eventually a mother and child climb on, prompting Kitty to give up her pair of seats and move down the bus. He takes in a deep breath. The seat beside him is still free. She pauses and then sinks gracefully down next to him. His hands, wrapped around his bag, tremble.

She turns.

‘You’re the one who pulls faces for Sylvie,’ she starts. ‘You make her laugh, I can always tell when you’re on the bus.’

He shrugs. ‘It passes the time.’

Her eyes crinkle in amusement. ‘But you do it for the whole bus ride. That’s quite dedicated.’

He thinks she’s teasing him but he’s not quite sure. ‘I know how hard it is to occupy a child for ages,’ he says, ‘I think it probably helps if other people join in.’

‘It’s true,’ she agrees, ‘it can be tiring… anyway, thank you. Sylvie calls you her bus friend you know!’

He laughs. ‘I suppose, when you spend entire bus rides pulling awful faces at each other, that does make you friends.’

They sit in silence for the rest of the ride but he’s happy that he’s finally talked to her and even happier that she initiated the conversation. When she gets off the bus she turns and smiles at him and he waves before realising that he probably looks like an idiot.

The next week when Kitty and Sylvie climb onto the bus there are quite a few spare seats, including a pair right in front of him. They sit and smiles are exchanged before Sylvie and Tom go into the ritual face pulling challenge. Unlike every other time though, Kitty is sat there watching and laughing along with Sylvie at every contortion of Tom’s face. It’s fun but at the same time a little odd. This is the woman he wants to woo and instead he is sat there screwing up his face for the amusement of her and her daughter. He gets the uncomfortable feeling that he is the court jester in love with the beautiful out of reach queen.

It takes Tom a good few weeks to pluck up the courage to ask Kitty on a date. In fact, it takes him so long that he’s pretty sure she’s been close to doing it herself. But one day he’s had enough of being too scared that she’ll say no and they’ve been chatting for weeks on the bus anyway. He can easily slip something into the conversation. Easily.

‘Do you, maybe, want to meet me?’ he asks softly.

She turns and faces him with Sylvie wriggling on her lap. ‘Oh, I don’t know, any free time I have is usually taken up with tidying the house and doing the darning.’

The twinkle in her eye is reassuring and he smiles back.

‘I could maybe meet you for coffee though?’ she says, ‘though Sylvie couldn’t come.’

‘That’s ok,’ he wants to add that it’s her she really wants to see but maybe that’s a bit much.

She leaves the bus that day with a time and a place quickly scribbled on a scrap of paper with Tom’s number on the other side. Neither want to take any chances with this.

The date is short and sweet. They have coffee and cookies and chat without the restraint of Sylvie and being on a bus. She is softer and happier than she often appears and though they don’t touch on the subject of Sylvie’s father, they skirt around it in a manner that gives Tom the idea it’s not the nicest subject for Kitty to talk about.

They leave with another date arranged and when Tom gets home, Miles teases him unmercifully about the soppy smile on his face.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s strange dating someone who you also see every day on the bus.

They share secret smiles and sit close together if they can and Tom is sure that the little old lady he sometimes helps up the step has twigged what is going on.

He and Kitty have only been on a few dates, plus one outing to the park with Sylvie and he is head over heels in love with her.

Miles jokes about Tom’s head being in the clouds but now it really feels like it is. He forgets things and makes mistakes with the paperwork at work and then when people send it back with angry post-its he just smiles and tries again. He used to be such a perfectionist and now he is slapdash, or as slapdash as he ever could be.

He loves it. He loves how he feels, he loves her.

They’ve worked out a system now, he gets on the bus at his stop and if they aren’t waiting then he gets off and gets on again when they get to their stop. It’s a little confusing and when he explained it to Miles he had to draw a diagram but it works. Sylvie seems to like him too which is nice, their initial bonding over face pulling has evolved into long debates over which dinosaur is better and who would win out of the dragon in Sleeping Beauty and the tiger in The Jungle Book. Sylvie’s sheer tenaciousness is what wins her most of these discussions, she clings to her point, never budging and he has to admit defeat with Kitty giggling beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally on my ff.net account but it's now here with an extra part which I found when I was re-uploading it. I have so much fic squirrelled away in folders on my harddrive it's ridiculous~


End file.
